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A new paper by Dr. Judith Curry, one of the world’s most prominent scientists skeptical of a looming human-caused climate catastrophe, and economist Harry DeAngelo cautions investors and the public that “the apocalyptic climate narrative is a seriously flawed guide for public policy.” Why? “Because it radically overstates the risks to humanity from continued global warming.” Wide-scale suppression of fossil fuel use will not measurably change future temperatures, but “a sharp decline in quality of life would surely ensue.”
We are proud to welcome Dr. Curry back to the show to dig deeper into her paper. We will also cover the Crazy Climate News of the Week, including a “die-in” at NOAA, how the polar ice crisis narrative is melting, Bernie Sanders wanting to ban gasoline cars but still flying private jets, and why climate change is not causing kids to miss more school days.
We are proud to welcome Dr. Curry back to the show to dig deeper into her paper. We will also cover the Crazy Climate News of the Week, including a “die-in” at NOAA, how the polar ice crisis narrative is melting, Bernie Sanders wanting to ban gasoline cars but still flying private jets, and why climate change is not causing kids to miss more school days.
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What is Environment and Climate News Podcast ?
The Heartland Institute podcast featuring scientists, authors, and policy experts who take the non-alarmist, climate-realist position on environment and energy policy.
That's right, Greta. It is Friday, and this is the best day of the week, not just because the weekend is almost here, but because this is the day the Heartland Institute broadcasts the climate Realism Show. My name is Jim Lakeley. I'm the vice president of the Heartland Institute. We're an organization that's been around for forty years and is known as the leading global think tank pushing back on climate alarmism.
Jim Lakely:Heartland and this show brings you the data, the science, the truth, and when we're fortunate, excellent guests to counter the climate alarmist narrative you've been fed every day of your life. There is nothing else quite like the Climate Realism Show streaming anywhere, so I hope you will bring your friends to view this livestream every Friday at 1PM eastern time. And also like, share, and subscribe, and leave your comments underneath the video. All of these very easy actions help the YouTube algorithm to smile upon this program and get it in front of even more people. And as a reminder, because big tech and the legacy media does not really approve of the way that we cover climate and energy policy on this program, Heartland's YouTube channel has been demonetized.
Jim Lakely:So if you wanna support this program, and I sure hope you do, please visit heartland dot org slash t c r s. That's heartland.org/tcrs, which stands for the Climate Realism Show, and you can help make sure that we keep this program coming to you every single week. Any support you can give is warmly welcome and greatly appreciated. And I also want to mention, we got a very generous contribution to Heartland just this week about because of this show. And I'd love to trumpet his name, but I have not gotten permission to do so.
Jim Lakely:Yet you know who you are. And we want to thank you very much for that. And I'm so glad and humbled that you are a fan of this program and chose to contribute to the Heartland Institute. So thank you. I also want to thank our streaming partners every week, JunkScience.com, CFACT, What's Up With That, The CO2 Coalition, and Heartland UK Europe.
Jim Lakely:So welcome to you all, and I hope you will follow all of these X accounts and become a subscriber to this show on YouTube and Rumble by subscribing to the Heartland Institute channel on YouTube and Rumble. Okay. We have a big show today and a very special guest, so let's get rolling. Today, we have with us Anthony Watts, senior fellow at the Heartland Institute and the publisher of the most influential website on climate in the world. What's up with that?
Jim Lakely:We have Linea Lucan. She's a research fellow for energy and environment policy at the Heartland Institute. And we are so happy to welcome back to the show once again, Doctor. Judith Curry. Doctor.
Jim Lakely:Curry is the president and co owner of Climate Forecast Applications Network, CFAN. In her previous life, she was a professor and the chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Institute of Technology. She has testified before Congress on climate matters at least a dozen times. She's been the star of several interviews of influential people in new media, including John Stassel and Jordan Peterson. And Doctor.
Jim Lakely:Curry is also the author of many books, the latest of which from 2023 being Climate Uncertainty and Rethinking Our Response, which I believe the last time you were on our program, we talked about that book. Oh, and she's also been a speaker at Heartland's International Conference on Climate Change. Doctor. Judith Curry, it is such a pleasure to have you back with us and our audience.
Judith Curry:Well, thanks for inviting me. It's always fun to talk with this group.
Jim Lakely:Yes. Should be a lot of fun in the chat for all these people watching it live and also watching it after we post it on our channel auto archived as we always do. But like I said, we have a lot to cover today. It's been a big news week in climate and energy. And, of course, we wanna talk about a new paper that doctor Curry and and a colleague had published just this week.
Jim Lakely:It's a pretty good paper, and we will go over that as well. But first, we'll start the show off as we always do with the crazy climate news of the week. Hit it, Andy. Thank you very much, Bill Nye. Safety first.
Jim Lakely:Safety first. Good thing you were taking care of that fire there. Alright. Our first item today is titled Noah Die In. Anthony Watts found this this week.
Jim Lakely:This is a Facebook post from the Boulder County Democratic Party, and that's about as progressive as it gets, Boulder County, Colorado. And it's described this way, and we'll play the video for you. Boulder hits the ground for workers' rights. On May Day, which I call commie Christmas, but they call International Workers' Day, protesters staged a die in at NOAA to symbolize the lives at risk from climate science cuts. With over 1,800 NOAA employees laid off nationwide, the protest highlighted the urgency of protecting federal workers and the essential services they provide.
Jim Lakely:Getting involved with your local party can help turn this protest into policy change. Alright. Andy, we got the video of that. It's well, it is what it is. Why don't you hit that video for us?
Jim Lakely:Yes. Good.
Judith Curry:Good job. Federal workers. Immigrant rights.
Speaker 1:Oh, boy.
Jim Lakely:Oh, boy. Alright. Well, I guess that could have gone on and on. Fourteen seconds is quite long enough. And in a week that we got a new pope, I like I thought the the ringing of the bells and the chimes was a nice touch.
Jim Lakely:Andy I'm sorry. Anthony, I wanna start with you because you shared this video with us. The Heartland Institute, we haven't had a good die in at our offices for quite a while, several years now, and I'm starting to feel neglected.
Anthony Watts:Yeah. It's just amazing what the people get this impression that since NOAA is being trimmed, you know, they're taking up some programs that aren't necessarily For example, the billion dollar weather disaster thing. They're taking that out because it's it's like it's just government backed propaganda. It's scaring people. So, they're taking out some of these programs, right?
Anthony Watts:And these folks treat this as if the whole weather service is going away. Weather forecasts are going to stop, you know. Rain, storms, pestilence are gonna come from the sky and destroy us, all this stuff. That's the way they view this. And, of course, it's a completely irrational view.
Anthony Watts:And by the way, speaking of irrational, get this. I found that I found that this week. The National Weather Service is putting up their guard. They are ordering all their offices to be on the lookout and, enhance their security because a group of nutballs is out to attack the weather radar stations at NOAA. Why?
Anthony Watts:Because there are dangerous death rays in the atmosphere. Seriously, they're that's what they're saying. They're saying this on Twitter. They're basically heating up the sky and causing all kinds of weather modification and so forth. So the WSR 88 d radar, a lifesaver since the early nineties, is now being viewed by a left wing nutballs as some kind of a weapon against the atmosphere, you know, designed to oppress us, and therefore, they wanna go out and attack these things.
Anthony Watts:That's the kind of irrationalization we are dealing with here on this side of the climate equation.
Jim Lakely:Yeah. Wow. Well, you know, it's funny, Judy. Right before we went on the air, you know, went live today, we were talking about, you know, the kind of the state of climate coverage in the media or climate alarmism. And as mentioned here in the setup for that little video, they're out there hitting the chimes and having a die in because 1,800 NOAA employees had been dismissed, that the Trump administration doesn't feel very necessary anymore.
Jim Lakely:And you had remarked that, I guess other than this Diane, it's gotten very little media attention.
Judith Curry:Yeah. The this whole issue, you know, of of climate change and the activism and the alarmism, you know, people are losing interest in it, you know, as far as I can tell. The media coverage on it just isn't there. With regards to NOAA, it's interesting. They're targeting the Office of Atmospheric Research, which funds the cooperative institutes, a number of the research labs, and the university grants program.
Judith Curry:This is the main thing that's being targeted at NOAA. And you may not realize it, but Boulder has 10 NOAA labs. I couldn't name more than about two or three of them, so I don't know what most of them even do. But, you know, if NOAA really hits this funding like it looks like they might, I mean, this could really make Boulder a big part of their population and economy is tied to these NOAA labs and the big cooperative institute at University of Colorado. And so all of the, you know, a lot of what goes on in Boulder has been sort of subsidized by these government labs for decades now.
Judith Curry:So that'll be a big change for that community.
Jim Lakely:Yeah. It made me think of that song Allentown by Billy Joel, but they're closing all the climate alarmism factories down, I guess, in Boulder, Colorado. Alright. Let's hit our second, item today, a little bit more substantive. The polar ice narrative is melting.
Jim Lakely:Now I I wanna get into this. Actually, I am gonna play this video. We can kinda set this up a I think a little a little bit by this video by John Kerry, who said this at the time he was the climate czar during Joe Biden's presidency. I think it's a great example of combining bad science and romantic myth that adds to the apocalyptic narrative, which is kind of our topic today. So go ahead and hit that Kerry video for us, Andy.
Speaker 1:The scientists there said to me, Mr. Secretary, if you really want to understand what's happening with climate change, you have to go to Antarctica. And so I went back to Washington and told my staff, We're going to Antarctica. And indeed, I flew out. I voted by absentee ballot.
Speaker 1:I flew out on the very election day in The United States. And learning the news, I learned flying over the Pacific, we almost thought we'd stay in the Antarctic. But I decided, obviously, to come back for the fight. But in the Antarctic, it was magical. I mean, I've never seen wilderness like that.
Speaker 1:There was something eerily grounding in this. And the firsthand impact of climate change that was being described to me by the, what, nearly 20 plus scientists from each of 20 plus countries that go there to do research, chilled me in terms of beyond the cold, in terms of what we are facing. I was at ground zero for climate change at McMurdo Station. As I listened to these scientists from all over the world and looked at chart after chart where they traced what has been happening, describing the latest, deeply alarming evidence of what is going on, I was generally scared. How do you translate this into a language that the average citizen can understand and connect to?
Speaker 1:I flew by helicopter over the great West Antarctic ice sheet, which now people say is threatened to perhaps break off or slide down and go off into the ocean to melt. I learned how the warmer water is spilling over the continental shelf and churning below the ice and creating instability in
Jim Lakely:Yeah. Okay. So even before we get into the data and analysis that we have queued up to rebut that soliloquy by John Kerry, I want to ask you, what do you think when you hear powerful people with great influence but no scientific training say such things with such confidence?
Judith Curry:Well, he's repeating what he was told. I don't doubt that there were some scientists there who were spinning this yarn for him. I mean, what he wanted to hear, this way they get more funding, they get, you know, their names in the newspaper, you know, their university or their institution is happy. So, you know, I don't think John Kerry made this stuff up. I think scientists were feeding it to him.
Judith Curry:But I think there are scientists who don't pay very much attention to the actual data, or they don't pay much attention to the uncertainties and trying to understand what we don't know about natural climate and geologic variability in that region, which is very substantial.
Jim Lakely:Yeah, that's true. You definitely heard what he wanted to hear. All right, so let's Andy, you can pull up the story. This is from the New York Post. This has been covered in other places, but I thought this piece from Roger Pelkey Jr, who I'm sure Doctor.
Jim Lakely:Curry is familiar with, we certainly are. He's a brave scientist. He follows the data and not the narrative. And he had a piece in the New York Post this week. Let me read a little bit from it.
Jim Lakely:When it comes to climate change, to invoke one of Al Gore's favorite sayings, the biggest challenge is not what we don't know, but what we know for sure but isn't so. The two new studies show that the Earth's climate is far more complex than often acknowledged, reminding us of the importance of pragmatic energy and climate policies. One of them, led by researchers at China's Tangie University, finds that after years of ice sheet decline, Antarctica has seen a surprising shift, unquote, a record breaking accumulation of ice. Doctor. Pelkey notes that since 02/2002, Antarctica has seen a steady decline in the total mass of its glaciers, yet the new study found the decline reversed from 2021 to 2023.
Jim Lakely:A second new paper, a preprint now going through peer review, finds a similar change at the opposite end of the planet. Quote, the loss of Arctic Sea ice cover has undergone a pronounced slowdown over the past two decades across all months of the year, the papers US and UK Authors write. They suggest that the, quote, pause in Arctic sea ice decline could persist for several more decades. Together, the two studies remind us that the global climate system remains unpredictable, defying simplistic expectations that change moves only in one direction. Helke then goes on to note that John Kerry predicted in 02/2009 that the Arctic would be ice free in the summer by 2013, and that didn't happen.
Jim Lakely:And Al Gore has made similar predictions that also did not come true. So again, since we'd so great to have you here, I want to start with you again, Judy, and maybe get your reaction to that. I mean, you've been studying climate as a scientist in academia and outside now for decades. These predictions on sea ice were wrong. In fact, they were unknowable, really, but they were pushed out there to create a panic that now seems difficult to stop or maybe easier to stop now.
Judith Curry:Yeah, I mean, I'll start with the Arctic sea ice, because that's the one that's gotten the most publicity over time. But there's a lot of natural climate variability involved in what goes on with the Arctic sea ice. In terms of melting, I mean, it's really the ocean currents and the heat transfer from the ocean that's more effective at causing any melt than any, you know, infrared CO2 driven heating from above. And a lot of this relates to the winds, about how the ice gets packed and moves around from, you know, sub basin to sub basin. So there's just a lot of variability tied up with the circulations.
Judith Curry:And, you know, the timing of cloudiness and, you know, all sorts of things play into how the Arctic Sea ice, you know, is varying. But you saw this big drop from about the year February to 02/2007, a big drop. Okay. And then you had some fluctuations, and then you had a low year in 2012, and then you saw some more fluctuations. But at the end of the day, where we're at right now is the same ice extent that we really saw in 02/2007.
Judith Curry:Okay? So we haven't seen any net change in, you know, approaching twenty years. And this
Anthony Watts:is It's a new stable regime, basically, that it's reached.
Judith Curry:Exactly. Exactly. And so, you know, when we see a big shift in the Atlantic circulation patterns, this could actually cause an increase. Natural variability is really the key driver. Yeah.
Judith Curry:There probably is some slow creep of declining sea ice from global warming, but it's really not in the driver's seat in terms of what we see on timescales of a few decades, which is really driven by natural variability. Now in the Antarctic, I mean, ironically, I mean, at McMurdo, there's no I mean, that's that's one of the few places on the planet where there isn't any climate change. This is in the center of the continent. I mean, that's pretty stable climate right there. And overall, the ice mass of Antarctic, which we can now measure with, you know, new satellite systems.
Judith Curry:I mean, it's a delicate balance between accumulation of snowfall and then melting. And we've actually seen, if you recall, in 2023, there was very little Antarctic sea ice. I mean, even during the winter. And this was caused by winds coming from the north, strong winds coming from the north that kept the ice very compact and close to the continent. So you had a very low sea ice extent.
Judith Curry:And they say, oh my gosh, global warming. Well, wasn't. It just was a particular wind pattern that was actually tied to what was going on in the stratosphere associated with the Hunga Tonga eruption. This was also a year where you had a big Antarctic ozone hole. So there's all sorts of complicated things going on.
Judith Curry:And ironically, that low sea ice period allowed more evaporation from the ocean close to the continent, and they had a big batch of snowfall on the continent, which increased the ice mass balance. So these are some of the processes that are going on and trying to blame everything on, you know, CO2 fueled warming. You know, that's just a small piece of what's going on here.
Linnea Lueken:Oh, you're both muted.
Anthony Watts:Sorry, had to pull the gem there. What I said was CO2 is a bit player in climate.
Jim Lakely:Terms of scale.
Judith Curry:Regional and decadal scale climate variability, CO2 is a bit player.
Jim Lakely:Yep. Alright. Very well analyzed. Thank you very much, doctor Curry. Let's move on to our third item right here for our news rundown, and I've titled it, funnily, I think, Bernie and the Jets.
Jim Lakely:Now socialist senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont who has called climate change the existential threat to humanity and has proposed getting rid of all fossil fuels and banning the internal combustion engine. He was interviewed by Brett Bear on Fox News the other day. Brett asked him about taking private jets on his, quote, unquote, fighting the oligarchy tour, and that hit 17 cities from February through April. And let's just say that Bernie's reaction of being asked about this hypocrisy for the first time didn't go too well for him. Go ahead and play that, please, Andy.
Speaker 7:Gotten criticized from other people. Free Beacon says Bernie Sanders spent 221,000 on private jets fighting the oligarchy tour paid for by friends of Bernie Sanders, that you've spent millions of dollars in campaign funds on private jet travel over the years. How how do you push back on both of those things?
Speaker 8:The last time you saw Donald Trump during a campaign mode at National Airport? No. No.
Speaker 7:No. It doesn't. But the he's also not fighting the oligarchy.
Speaker 8:No. You you run a campaign and you do three or four or five rallies in a week. The only way you can get around to talk to 30,000 people. Think I'm gonna be sitting on a waiting line at United waiting you know, what, 30,000 people are waiting? That's the only way you can get No apologies for that.
Speaker 8:That's what campaign travel is about. We've done it in the past. We're gonna do it in the future. And you
Jim Lakely:Right.
Linnea Lueken:Just do not change.
Jim Lakely:Yeah. I mean, Lynne, I want I do wanna start with you. I mean, can you imagine a senator sitting in an airport where all the dirty, smelly people waiting to board a United Airlines flight?
Linnea Lueken:He has like three speeches. He has three speeches a week. He can't stand in line, you know, like James Taylor or something, president of the Heartland Institute, who definitely stands in line at the airport to go do three speeches in a week, sometimes international. Yeah. No, it's nonsense.
Linnea Lueken:But, you know, I you know, it would be one thing if he wasn't running around doing this, like, oligarchy tour. Like he said, you know, Donald Trump takes a private jet. I don't have any issues with people taking private jets. I do have an issue with people taking private jets while they're telling the rest of us that we shouldn't be driving our cars to and from work. We should be taking public transportation because we're killing the planet with emissions.
Linnea Lueken:That's that's what bothers me.
Jim Lakely:Yeah. I mean, the carbon footprint, if you care about that, of taking private aviation as opposed to flying commercial is 20 times higher. So yeah. And he doesn't feel the need to apologize for that, I guess.
Anthony Watts:Yeah. So I think the thing to do to combat this is that we start spreading the rumor that all of the chemtrails in the sky are caused by burning.
Jim Lakely:Anthony, you promised it was gonna be a chem chemtrails free podcast today, and you just broke your
Anthony Watts:That was a joke. That was not on a discussion. Alright.
Jim Lakely:Alright. Let's move on to this next one. This comes from our very own Anthony Watts at our very own Climate Realism website, climaterealism.com. Climate change and school days. Anthony writes a story with the headline, wrong, Fizz.org.
Jim Lakely:Climate change isn't causing a rise in lost school days. Anthony writes here, in a recent editorial published by Fizz.org, researchers claim that climate change is driving more powerful and frequent hurricanes, which in turn are causing widespread school closures, labeling it an, quote, overlooked consequence of our supposedly worsening climate. This narrative is false. The available data shows no trend of increasing hurricane frequency or intensity due to human induced climate change. And if the storms themselves aren't worsening, the claim that they are causing more missed school days due to climate change collapses under its own weight.
Jim Lakely:According to NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, there is no strong evidence of an increase in either the number or intensity of hurricanes globally due to human caused climate change. And if you're wondering how any of this relates to kids missing days of school, Anthony explains, the authors of the phys.org piece make the speculative leap from, quote, climate driven hurricanes to, quote, missed school days. But if their logic runs off the rails here, there is no credible evidence that links climate change to educational disruptions. And even if storm related school closures are increasing in some areas, the cause is due to shifts in administrative policy, liability concerns, and enhanced emergency response protocols rather than intense weather. So, Anthony, obviously, you need to go first on this one.
Jim Lakely:There seems to be no end to the long list of, calamities, social calamities caused by us driving our SUVs.
Anthony Watts:Yeah. This is one of the worst cases of a reporter basically having a narrative in their head saying, you know, climate change is making hurricanes worse. That's that's all the research they did on this before they wrote this piece. They make that assumption. Climate change is worsening hurricanes without actually looking at any data.
Anthony Watts:And then they write from that narrative. And so they make these fantastic leaps of illogic to come up with these things such as, you know, well, it's causing more lost school days. But when you go really look at what's been going on with schools over the last thirty years or so, I mean, they've been much more cautious about weather and, you know, back when when I grew up, we had to walk both ways uphill in the snow to school, you know, that kind of stuff. They they would keep schools open, you know, unless it was a real calamity. And so now, even the hint of a hurricane may be hitting Florida or South Carolina or wherever it might be, there's school closures instead of waiting until the actual thing gets here.
Anthony Watts:So the increase in days can be attributed to changes in policy, not climate change, but they never made that connection. And that's really shoddy journalism. Yeah.
Judith Curry:Okay. I have a comment on this one. There is some nuance here. The biggest issue with hurricanes in recent years has been inundation and flooding. Okay, compound flooding from, you know, storm surge, rivers and heavy rainfall.
Judith Curry:And the exacerbating factor, well, apart from, you know, land use and building too much stuff in the way of all this, there is an issue. Since about 2017, there's been a shift in the frequency of Atlantic landfalls more towards September and October and away from August. And this means that these hurricanes then interact with the mid latitude storm systems and produce more rain, or they can stall like Harvey. So we're seeing more interactions with landfalling hurricanes happening in the fall, interacting with mid latitude storms and producing more flooding. So flooding is something that you want to, it's not like the wind damage, know, it's over in two hours.
Judith Curry:So the flooding is something that can fool you, it can happen before landfall, and it can persist for a long time. We of course saw the huge mess from Hurricane Helene in Western North Carolina. So there are complexities here, and there are maybe more school closures. I don't know, it's not something I've looked at related to, you know, maybe a shift in when these hurricanes are happening over the seasonal cycle. But, you know, you can't blend that on CO2.
Judith Curry:So, there is some, there is perhaps an issue to look at, but you can't blame it on CO2.
Anthony Watts:Right. Yeah. Well, that's the whole narrative lately. Everything is caused by CO2, you know. There's been a meme going around on Facebook in the last week where people have this they say, I was tying my shoes today, and my shoelace broke.
Anthony Watts:Obviously, it was caused by climate change. Seriously, that's the kind of mocking they're doing now because regular people are starting to recognize that the the level of of fear mongering that's going on out there has become absurd. And so they're starting to mock it now. And I think that that is a contributes to the decline of interest in the whole climate change thing that's going on right now. That and, of course, the, the Trump administration is squishing it like a bug, wherever they can.
Anthony Watts:But, yeah, here it is. This is going around Facebook. It gets a lot of it gets a lot of repeats. It gets a lot of reposts. People are laughing at that.
Anthony Watts:And it's a good meme because it basically illustrates that the level of claims are reaching the absurd. They're getting desperate. And so we see more and more absurd claims.
Linnea Lueken:Well, I think some of that you can really see with the what what I think seems to be quite a bit of a scam or a racket that's made just for media posts. And that's the like attribution, the individual event attribution studies that come out where they go and they say this storm would have been this percentage less severe had we not been using carbon, you know, had we not been emitting carbon dioxide. And it's to me, all of those, the rapid attribution studies seem to be just tailor made for headlines. They come out so fast. There's no way that they could have, especially with hurricanes that they could have incorporated all the data because the National Hurricane Center doesn't even consolidate everything and finalize everything until like potentially days to weeks after the hurricane is already over.
Linnea Lueken:So yeah. No, it's very irritating.
Jim Lakely:Yeah. Didn't I hear news this week that NOAA or some federal agency is ending the collection of the so called billion dollar storm thing tracking anymore. I think they started it in 1997. So actually, the reason I thought of it is I saw this morning a tombstone, and it's a billion dollar weather disasters, 1997 to 02/2025, rest in peace. So, yeah.
Jim Lakely:You know, do you have any thoughts on that, Judy? There it is up on screen. Thanks for that.
Judith Curry:Yeah. They failed to take account of you know, various changes, you know, in terms of, you know, they tried to make this look like, you know, climate change is causing all this. They failed to, you know, account for various inflationary and population changes and property development changes and adaptation changes. You know, they didn't scale for any of this. And Roger Pilkey Jr.
Judith Curry:Has called this out as being completely misleading. When you do the appropriate scaling, you don't see a trend. But at the end of the day, if you're trying to show that global warming causes worsening hurricanes, I mean, leave the damage data out of it. You know, just look at the physics of the storms and the data, and and try not to relate it to damage because that is just, you know, far too fungible in terms of all the many factors that influence it.
Anthony Watts:Yeah, the whole thing about billion dollar disasters has been it reinforces the need for more climate research. Know, it's like from their perspective, a disaster away keeps the budget hatchet away. And so they just keep trying to put out more and more stuff to make you think it's getting worse or bad or whatever, and we need more money. And so it boils down to empire building within the government. And so that's come toppling down very quickly now.
Anthony Watts:Course, there's a lot of screaming going on with all of that, but it's it's justifiable. You know, we do not need to have a government arm of climate propaganda out there pushing out things that are not necessarily true, that are based on, you know, illogics leaps of illogic from, you know, some indications of data to something that's totally irrational. And we've seen a lot of that. And Roger Piocke Jr. Was very right to call us out.
Anthony Watts:And kudos to him for being a spearhead against this nonsense.
Jim Lakely:Yeah, for sure. I mean, it seems climate realism is on the rise. I don't just say that because that's the name of this show. But we're going to talk about something that I think bolsters that argument, that is our main topic. And that's Judy Curry on the climate apocalypse.
Jim Lakely:You should be visiting her if you're interested in this topic at all. You should be a regular visitor of her blog, Climate, etcetera. And she gave a little summary of her paper that was just released this week with a post titled Critique of the Apocalyptic Climate Narrative. Now, Judy, you wrote on your blog that you and economist Harry DeAngelo have a new paper, as I just mentioned, published in the Journal of Applied Corporate Finance. It's titled A Critique of the Apocalyptic Climate Narrative.
Jim Lakely:The paper reflects the journal's ongoing interest in publishing articles that analyze important environmental, social, and governance, ESG, issues in ways that are useful for investors, money managers, and corporate directors, as well as for the economists and legal scholars who study corporate governance. Now, uh-oh, you know, we mentioned ESG, but stay with us here because I have a feeling this paper, this is a paper that the corporate investor audience that doctor Curry is targeting were not maybe expecting this, but maybe relieved to see. So here, you and Harry D'Angelo write, the apocalyptic climate narrative is a seriously misleading propaganda tool and a socially destructive guide for public policy. Their narrative radically overstates the risks to humanity of continued global warming, which are manageable, not existential. It prescribes large scale near term suppression of fossil fuel use while failing to recognize the huge costs that such suppression would inflict on humans because fossil fuels are currently irreplaceable inputs for producing food via ammonia based fertilizer, steel, cement, and plastics.
Jim Lakely:This paper details the flaws in the apocalyptic climate narrative, including why the threat from human caused climate change is not dying and why urgent suppression of fossil fuel use would be unwise. We argue that sensible public policies would focus instead on developing a diversified portfolio of energy sources to support greater resilience and flexibility to respond to whatever weather and climate extremes that might occur. We identify nine principles for sensible US public policies toward energy and discuss implications of the flaws in the narrative for investors and their agents. Now, doctor Curry, I applaud your work and your adherence to science and data and not alarmism. And I imagine the analysis and data and the conclusions of this paper might be quite lonely in the academic literature.
Jim Lakely:I wonder if you can just start us off talking a little bit about this paper and what you found.
Judith Curry:Okay. Well, just a little bit of backstory. You know, my day job, you know, as president of climate forecast applications network, we have a lot of clients in the insurance and the energy sector broadly defined. So, you know, I work with them to help understand and manage their weather and climate related risk. And I've also helped several companies to work through the ESG process.
Judith Curry:And I'm continually, especially my insurance clients, mostly insurance linked securities, their investors are always saying, you know, like the fund managers are saying, you know, this is what we think is gonna be happen. This is how we should allocate our money. And then the investors say, what about global warming? You know, and they have to come up with some sort of an argument to say, know, if you were just going invest based strictly on a global warming argument, you know, you're going to lose a lot of money and I have to help them figure out how to make that case. Was maybe two years ago, I was invited to testify before the Senate Banking Committee, Senator White House's committee on the impact of global warming on the insurance sector.
Judith Curry:And I wrote, you know, testimony, you know, explaining, you know, where I thought all this was going and what was wrong with it. And, you know, with the ESG and investing. And when Harry DeAngelo, he contacted me, you know, some months ago, you know, and had a draft of a paper that he wanted my take on it. And he wanted to publish it in the Journal of the Corp. Applied Corporate Finance.
Judith Curry:He said the editor, you know, wanted him to submit a paper on this. And I didn't like the first draft of the paper because it was a bit of a polemic. And I thought, you know, I was interested in this audience. And so we decided to collaborate. But basically, I, you know, took a lot of the arguments from my book, Climate Uncertainty and Risk, you know, and summarized them in terms of, you know, is this really, you know, the climate crisis isn't what it used to be.
Judith Curry:A lot of these arguments that I made in my book, and we tailored them to this particular audience. Specifically with regards to ESG, I mean, are struggling, you know, to show some harm to their company or their activities that would be caused by human caused warming on timescales of maybe thirty years, because that's, you know, the length that we're looking at. I mean, this is a timescale where natural weather and climate variability dominates, you know. And so what are they supposed to say? You know, a heat wave might be, you know, two tenths of a degree warmer.
Judith Curry:What kind of an impact is that? You know, so there's very little they can show. And and so it's very frustrating for them to try to make up some sort of narrative. And so people use the 8.5 extreme emissions scenarios to try to show an impact. And, of course, real policymakers have abandoned the extreme emissions scenarios since 2021.
Judith Curry:You know, it's only the scientists who keep pushing the extreme emissions scenario, not people who energy economists who realize that these are totally implausible scenarios, and policymakers have even abandoned them. So we have this little fiction keeping this whole thing afloat. And then the other irony thing that you're supposed to do, this is part of the governance part of ESG. You're supposed to warn your stockholders of any stranded assets that you might have because of all this. And what they really mean is, petroleum and coal related assets.
Judith Curry:All of this is going to be defunct, and you're going to lose money. And the real irony of this is right now it looks like biggest stranded, potential stranded assets would be offshore wind turbines. So those are the ones that are looking and even onshore wind that are looking, you know, in a decade or two, my guess is that a lot of that is going to be stranded. So it's really misguided. You know, some of the ideas behind ESG, you know, in terms of, you know, environmental responsibility and stuff, you know, they're just fine.
Judith Curry:And being aware of your vulnerability of your supply chains to extreme weather. I mean, those things are all good. But the real motivation for this is related to human caused climate change and the drive to get rid of fossil fuels. And so it really torques companies to either waste their time putting together these reports, and to do a real thorough report with the climate impact assessment, you know, can cost upwards of 200 ks if you hire these firms who have developed a cottage industry and downscaling the models and impact models and stuff like that. Or worse yet, I mean spending that money and wasting all that time is one thing, but worse yet, it can guide your investments in unfortunate directions.
Judith Curry:Not only can you lose money on things like offshore wind, but there's an opportunity cost. There's better places for your money to go, okay, that is being taught by this whole ESG game. So these are some of the issues that we try to address. Going through all the science bits, you know, most of this comes out of my book Climate Uncertainty and Risk, if you're familiar with that. So there's, it's really, the climate crisis isn't what it used to be.
Judith Curry:We're no longer using the extreme emissions scenario. Even the IPCC agrees that the extreme high values of climate sensitivity are unlikely, and so forth and so on. You know, there needs to be more of a realistic, pragmatic approach for companies to try to deal with these issues, you know, make sure they have enough energy. I mean, the biggest issue facing a lot of these companies is having enough energy, especially with the AI and the need for data centers and everybody adopting this technology. There's a huge explosion in the need for electricity.
Judith Curry:So, mean, this is the biggest problem facing these companies, not trying to carbon credits and all this kind of thing. So, you know, just trying to give more of a rational basis for companies and investors to try to cope with this issue. And, you know, I think what I'm hearing from the new Secretary of Energy and Secretary of Interior and the EPA is that they're looking for pragmatic approaches. They're not looking just nuke the whole thing because they realize we can have this windshield wiper thing back and forth between Republican administrations versus Democratic administrations. The way I read it, they're looking for some sort of pragmatic, sensible compromise to move forward on a rational twentieth century energy transition and reduce our vulnerability to extreme weather and make sure everybody has enough energy.
Judith Curry:So, you know, I I think that's where this is going. And to worry about real pollution rather than, you know, these Biden put in place so many of these stringent anti pollution things designed to make it impossible for a coal plant to operate. And, you know, putting it at levels that make no sense for human or ecosystem health. So, you know, a lot of nonsensical things have been going on. We just try to lay out, you know, a rational basis for moving forward in a sensible way on this stuff.
Anthony Watts:Yeah. One of the most nonsensical things that's been going on with the climate narrative in the past decade or more has been focusing on severe weather equals climate change. And in every situation, it seems like when you actually look at the data, it actually fails. But you have a paragraph in your paper I want to highlight that says, second, the risks from human caused global warming are difficult to separate credibly from natural weather and climate variability. And the risk to a large degree reflect the vulnerability vulnerabilities of less developed countries and poorer population generally.
Anthony Watts:Increasing wealth and productivity will continue to reduce humanity's vulnerability to weather and climate related risk. And that is so true. I mean, you look at what we what's happened in the last century in The United States and around the world. As we have become more wealthy, more affluent, more knowledgeable, enabled by fossil fuels, by the way. We have been better at predicting hurricanes, getting people out of the way, predicting tornadoes, and getting people out of the way, you know, mitigating against sea level issues, mitigating against all kinds of weather events.
Anthony Watts:And so we're going to get even better at that as the future comes our way. And, you know, we're going to have better models for predicting weather. We're going to have better systems for the mitigation of the effects. And so, what Doctor. Curry has basically done here in this one paragraph is basically created a path for the future that's, like you say, pragmatic.
Anthony Watts:And I applaud you for that.
Judith Curry:Thanks, Anthony.
Linnea Lueken:It's also pretty funny, you know, when you were talking about the things that Trump is doing to unwind a lot of what Biden had done in previous administrations had done, especially with regards to agencies kind of misusing their power. Like, something came across my feed this morning about how the US Geological Survey has been asked to stop focusing all in on climate change stuff and actually start doing some geological surveys. So that's pretty incredible. I like to hear that. That was very nice.
Anthony Watts:Yeah. Everybody's gotten on the bandwagon of trying to save the planet. We must do something, you know, and it's invaded virtually every government organization. And so Trump is right to get these people back on track to their core emissions.
Jim Lakely:Well, I mean, Judy, you've talked about this a lot. I mean, this is where the funding is. And, you know, if you put climate change, you can basically research anything your heart desires as long as you put and the impact on climate change in the proposal. And the federal government has been funding that for decades now. And there's a new sheriff in town, and he's not going to be willing to pay for that sort of stuff anymore.
Jim Lakely:So it seems to me that it might be drying up because that's the incentive for a lot of this, I think.
Judith Curry:Well, okay. The funding, they're just not funding climate scientists like me. But the National Institute of Health, if you want to get a proposal funded by the National Institute of Health, you somehow fit the words climate change in there, and you have a much better chance of getting funded. I mean, you know, it's ridiculous. I mean, completely ridiculous.
Judith Curry:But that's the game, okay, that people have to play. And I think, as far as I understand it, proposals at NSF and NOAA and federal funding agencies like that are being flagged for certain keywords, not that they're being thrown out, but they're being flagged for extra scrutiny. I certainly hope that fundamental climate dynamics research will continue, but some of this impacts work, where people just look at the output of climate models and try to find something scary. You know, it just isn't useful. But, you know, so I'm hoping we can get back to basics in climate research.
Judith Curry:That would
Jim Lakely:be good. Yeah, before we get to the Q and A here from our audience, we have quite a few questions already. What kind of reaction has this paper gotten or what kind of feedback have you gotten from both the corporate business community and you know, fellow scientists and researchers?
Judith Curry:Okay, well, Harry sent preprints to a number of people that he knew in the economics and business community, you know, several hundred, you know, responses from a lot the vast majority were very favorable, you know, maybe two of them were, you know, sort of hysterical, but the consensus and, know, all this kind of thing. And, this is just gonna be a disaster if people pay attention to this paper. Were a few reactions like that, but most of them were, Oh, well, this is a lot of material that I didn't know. I mean, this puts it into perspective. This makes sense.
Judith Curry:So I was very gratified by that. And then when it was published, I started tweeting and posted an article on my blog, and this gave the paper more exposure in, you know, the atmospheric and environmental and energy space. I think the paper has been downloaded maybe some 3,500 times or something. Still early days, the paper was just published. So it is getting some readership and also I think Anthony post cross posting this on what's up with that also.
Judith Curry:I mean help the paper downloads and help, you know, spread the word. But I'm hoping, you know, the article gets some traction, because, you know, there's a lot of common sense. And I think it resonated with a lot of people. Yeah, I'll also send a copy of the paper to my clients, you know, in the insurance and energy sector, because they face all these kind of issues too. So I'll see what kind of a response I get from them.
Judith Curry:I'll probably do that early next week.
Jim Lakely:All right. And we'll and we'll put a link to your blog post on this and also the paper itself in the description of this video so people can check it out for themselves.
Judith Curry:Great. Thank you.
Jim Lakely:All right. Well, let's We do have a lot of questions for you, Judy, and the rest of the panel here. So why don't we get going with that? One of our favorite parts of this show. So Linea, take it away.
Jim Lakely:Alright. That's a more controversial drop.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. I made a joke behind the scenes. I'm gonna get out my handy dandy notebook with that with the with the intro the way it is there. Okay. Thank you very much.
Linnea Lueken:So I'm going to address a couple of kind of funny questions that we have from some of our usual viewers today to start. And that is from Chris, who says, isn't Sterling back from Rome yet? Sterling Burnett, our other panelists on the show, who is, in fact, the Archbishop of Rancher Berry. He is not back from Rome. No.
Linnea Lueken:He unfortunately was not able to join us today, but he'll appreciate knowing that people were asking for him. All right. Let's see. John Hunter says, where's Al Gore these days? Anybody seen him?
Linnea Lueken:Anthony, where is Al Gore?
Anthony Watts:No idea.
Judith Curry:He popped up. I I saw him. He popped up somewhere, you know, spouting the same stuff. I said, oh, haven't seen Algar in a while. And I spotted this within the last few weeks.
Judith Curry:So he's still out there still saying the same things. Again, people are obviously aren't paying too much attention to him anymore.
Anthony Watts:Yeah. I think what's happened with a lot of the climate alarmists Michael Mann did this. He and and some of the other ones, they moved from Twitter over to this other platform called Blue Sky, which they basically did that to get away from criticism. And, they've got their own little click going on over there. And I think Gore's over there too.
Anthony Watts:And so what's happened is, is their visibility has actually gone down because they've moved to this other platform that's not mainstream. And they get to have their own conversations where they're reinforcing each other's egos and ideas and so forth and so on, you know, and man can blather all he wants and not have to worry about critiquing because all of his acolytes will go, oh, that's wonderful. That's perfect. That's visionary. All that other rubbish that they think because they don't have critical thinking skills.
Anthony Watts:But I think that's what's happened here with our climate cabal in general. They've isolated themselves now, from social media to prevent criticism, and they're getting ignored or just looking like they've disappeared.
Judith Curry:Yeah. Michael Mann, he had an announcement on his Twitter that he was leaving Twitter on January 20 when Trump is inaugurated largely because Michael Mann hates Elon Musk, not to mention hates Donald Trump. So, you know, all his little minions followed him and and left. And you're right. Now they just have a big echo chamber over there, and nobody's paying attention.
Anthony Watts:Yep.
Linnea Lueken:All right. Excellent. Let's see. This is a quick one. I'm not actually sure.
Linnea Lueken:This Ian oh, I think the answer is yes to this. But Ian McMillan says, and there are volcanoes under the Antarctic ice sheet, right?
Judith Curry:Yes, for sure. The number 80 comes to mind, and I'm trying to figure out what part of the West Antarctic ice sheet was actually covered by that. But there are a lot of geothermal heat flux coming up, and there was actually one active volcano. The West Antarctic ice sheet is uplifting. It also has there's a lot of geologic activity in that region.
Judith Curry:Believe me, everything on global warming is just really misguided. A lot of geologic activity.
Linnea Lueken:Awesome. Okay. This is an interesting question. I wonder if Anthony might have an interesting answer and as well as Doctor. Curry.
Linnea Lueken:So Chris Nisbet asks, does less sea ice cover actually allow for more heat to escape from the sea? So inherently, it's self regulating.
Judith Curry:Yeah, that's a good question. The answer is yes. It's not only about heat, it's also about evaporation and snowfall. Okay. So we saw this in Antarctica, where the sea ice extent was reduced because the wind was just pushing it all towards the continent.
Judith Curry:That enabled more water vapor and more snowfall to fall on the continent. So there's both thermal and rainfall kind of feedbacks.
Anthony Watts:How does albedo change too?
Judith Curry:Albedo change too. So it's lots of interesting processes, not just like a one way causality associated with CO2 increasing.
Linnea Lueken:This is another interesting question from Gilbert Guise, who asks, I'm curious, what are your thoughts on polar shifting and climate effects? And I think what he means is magnetic polar
Judith Curry:Well, there is probably something there, but people aren't paying attention to it. And that sort of surprises me, because if you talk to planetary scientists, you know, I'm talking about, you know, Mars or Saturn or whatever, the magnetic field is really a big part of how they understand and explain the atmosphere of those planets. And I asked the planetary scientists, well, why don't you do magnetic field modeling, you know, for the Earth? Oh, that's way too complicated, so we don't do it. Woah, okay, that was sort of a signal that there's probably something there, but people aren't looking at it.
Judith Curry:You know, that's one of those known unknowns that people really should pay attention to. I don't know what kind of effect. I would be very surprised if it had no effect.
Anthony Watts:Yeah, but whether it's a large effect is the question.
Judith Curry:I don't know. Yeah, it could. It could. I don't know.
Anthony Watts:That's the honest answer that a lot of scientists won't do. They don't wanna say, we don't know, because they wanna appear like they know everything or they're, you know, on top of their game or whatever. But the honest answer that you just gave is refreshing, and we need more of that.
Linnea Lueken:Absolutely. If
Jim Lakely:you don't know, you can't impose the policy preferences that you you want to impose. Exactly.
Linnea Lueken:That and I think that, you know, lay people really hate hearing I don't know from scientists a lot of the time. So I think and especially government people. Right. So I think there's also probably a lot of pressure on scientists to manufacture an answer. They shouldn't be doing that, but I think there's a lot of pressure to do it.
Linnea Lueken:So nothing as it seems says, ask Judith about the Heinrich event that was at the end of the Younger Dryas.
Judith Curry:Okay. Well, Heinrich, you know, this is like huge fluctuations in global temperature, like, after the end of the previous ice age. And people still don't quite understand what caused them. I think it was feedbacks from the sea ice and changing mass balance of glaciers, ocean circulation patterns, and all these interactions. So it was, you know, a lot of big changes went on during the period that we don't have convincing simple explanations, but it was almost certainly associated with thermodynamic feedbacks associated with ice sheets and also large scale ocean circulations.
Judith Curry:Natural climate variability in other words.
Linnea Lueken:Absolutely. Okay. We have this is a good question from Gustavo. Oh, I'm sorry, Gustavo. Your your name is gonna kill me here, but I think he's from Portugal.
Linnea Lueken:And he says, one claim made by alarmist that is the core issue is not unprecedented warming, but rather the rate of warming, which prevents ecosystems from adapting. How true is this?
Judith Curry:Okay. Whether or not the rate of warming that we're seeing is unusual is something we don't know, largely because, you know, the the geologic, you know, you look at the hockey stick and all those even longer records going back ten thousand years ago, the time resolution is like three hundred to five hundred years. So to identify a fifty year spike of warming, you know, you just simply can't resolve it in those data sets. So almost certainly, this is not unprecedented rate of warming, but we're unable to document this because our paleoclimate proxies don't have a small enough time resolution for us to resolve this.
Linnea Lueken:Awesome. Great questions today, you guys. Thank you. Let's see. Diane, I see Diane Selby has two questions about hurricane season this year.
Linnea Lueken:I'm gonna save that in case we have time, Diane. We're definitely gonna have a hurricane season starter episode Once we get a lot of that information and we'll have hurricane experts on again, like Stan or someone. So we will This is a big part
Judith Curry:of what I do is hurricane seasonal hurricane forecasting. So if you want to ask me, I'm good.
Linnea Lueken:Oh, sure. Okay. So we can ask it.
Anthony Watts:We're good.
Linnea Lueken:Okay. So Diane Selby asks, what's the hurricane predictions for 2025, and how was hurricane prediction for 2024? How accurate was it?
Judith Curry:Okay. Okay. We'll start with 2024 first. Most forecast providers were predicting a crazy active season. There was record Atlantic temperatures, and they expected a La Nina to occur.
Judith Curry:The main metric that people look at for seasonal forecast is the accumulated cyclone energy. Okay, so average since 1995 is about 135. The average forecast, ACE forecast last year was two fifteen, which with some as high as two forty. Okay, the end of season ACE accumulation was 168. My company nailed it last year.
Judith Curry:Our forecast starting December, the season before, ranged from 161 to 171. So as far as I know, my company is the only one that nailed it. For this season, we're also looking at another active season. Most of the forecasts are coming in around 150 for ACE, which is still above average activity even for this active period since 1995. My company is a little higher than average at around 170.
Judith Curry:In terms of landfalls, again we're looking at higher than average landfalls in The U. S, and we're looking at them focused on Florida and the Gulf Coast rather than the Atlantic Coast. So that's what I see right now. There will be a new batch of seasonal forecasts coming out in early June. So if you time your hurricane episode to be, you know, after mid June, I think you'd have a good representative sample of forecast to talk about.
Linnea Lueken:Awesome. Well, there you go, Diane. Thank you so much. Okay. Let's see.
Linnea Lueken:I'm going to get another one that's directed directly at Doctor. Curry. So this is from David Schnare, who says, question for Judy, are the new PhDs in climate taking more rational positions than the hardcore of my generation?
Judith Curry:No, it's getting worse. The current cohort, okay, with all this, what I would say, DEI stuff in the universe, I was talking to a faculty member at one of the premier, at the AMS meeting, at one of the premier, you know, departments for atmospheric science research. And the faculty member said, we can't flunk, we have to pass everybody through the PhD qualifying exam, otherwise there'll be a lawsuit or something. So we pass all these students in that are, you know, some of which are marginally qualified, and then they all want to do a thesis where they analyze the output of climate models to try to find some scary impact so they can do a press release and, you know, get a lot of publications and get a job at some, you know, NGO think tank that pays a big salary. So, you know, that's what I see coming down the pike.
Judith Curry:There's a few university departments that have kept true, you know, to studying climate dynamics and really having a very rigorous program, but they're the exception rather than the rule. So I don't see in the current cohort that are PhD students, I think it's gonna be the worst cohort yet.
Linnea Lueken:Do you think it's possible, Judy, that the wins on that will kind of change even within that group if there ends up being some kind of pushback in their industry towards, you know, against kind of alarmism and against the overuse of models?
Judith Curry:Because the people who the cohort who are attracted to get these degrees, they want to save the world, they're environmental crusaders, are not fundamentally physicists who want to understand, you know, the climate system. So we've had the wrong personality type applying into these programs, and the universities have capitulated and keeping them happy so they can keep the mill turning. So I think we just need a new cohort. Okay, once the funding dries up for a lot of this kind of what I would call applied climate research, and there's modest grants to support climate dynamics research, then we'll get back to the tradition of attracting physics based students, you know, into the field to do a serious PhD. So, it's going to take a while.
Linnea Lueken:And I have another related question up on screen here from over under above who says, Do you think pragmatism and realism will ever prevail? And in terms of forecasting, if it does, how long do you think it's going to take?
Judith Curry:Well, I think we've seen a seismic change, you know, with the Trump administration. I mean, we now realize how much of all this alarmism was just pure politics. You know, people don't really care when the politics change, they just move on to something else. It's not like they're, you know, all of the just stop oil and all these people, you know, they've just moved on. Gretta Thunberg has moved on.
Judith Curry:You know, all of these people have moved on because it's no longer the political issue du jour. I mean, the wind have gone from the sails of this issue. So, you know, I think, you know, it's gonna take a little bit. I I think there's a sensible approach, you know, with the the Trump administration and the EPA Department of Energy and Department of an Interior who are gonna tackle this issue in a sensible way from what I understand. So, you know, I think that's a good thing.
Judith Curry:You know, if the tables turn in the next election and Democrats are back in power, will they then embrace climate change like Joe Biden did? I suspect they won't. I suspect there'll be other issues that they think are more important. So, you know, this may be a change point.
Anthony Watts:They a tendency to move on very quickly when it something becomes unpopular.
Jim Lakely:Right. Well, again, if the funding dries up, then that that that ends it. I mean, there are a lot there are a lot of very deep pocketed not a lot, but there are some deep pocketed so called progressive organizations out there. Oligarchs. Oligarchs.
Jim Lakely:You could use that word. That's right. Funding journalism that pedals only alarmism, and we'll see how long that continues.
Judith Curry:Yeah.
Linnea Lueken:From Kite Man Music, we have, what was the CO2 level during the 1970s ice age prediction?
Judith Curry:I'm trying to remember. I think it was about 03:30.
Anthony Watts:I'm looking it up right now.
Judith Curry:Yeah, 03:30 is what I'm thinking.
Linnea Lueken:Will have it
Anthony Watts:for you Ask
Jim Lakely:Gruk.
Linnea Lueken:Yeah.
Anthony Watts:Gruk, is this true?
Linnea Lueken:Gruk, is this true?
Anthony Watts:In 1975, it was about 330 or two Wow.
Jim Lakely:Right on it, Judy. Well done. Now
Linnea Lueken:is that a good thing that you were able to pull that right out right out of your mind, doctor Courier, because you've been looking at it for too long?
Judith Curry:My PhD thesis, you know, during the 70s, and I remember, you know, the standard was three ten that everyone was using. Said, you know, because I had a radiative transfer, I said, you know, CO2 is increasing, I better update that value. And then I updated it to three thirty. And again, it was less than a 10% difference. So it wasn't huge.
Judith Curry:But I remember, that's why I remember that number. I mean, that's a very long time to remember anything.
Linnea Lueken:This is a really good question from David Cunningham, who says, for Doctor. Curry, what research should be funded at present, and what are important questions to attack?
Judith Curry:Okay, the key topics to attack are sun climate connections, including solar indirect effects. There's not enough attention paid to that. General issues related to natural climate variability, both in the oceans, ice sheets, and geologic type processes. We need more funding of that. We need to better understand how natural climate variability influences extreme weather events.
Judith Curry:So we get like certain regimes of activity and quiet periods and better understand that so we know how to predict things, you know, ten, thirty years down the road. So investors, insurance companies, whatever, can make decisions about infrastructure. There's still a huge amount of research that needs to be done on clouds, you know, all the different scales of motion, we still don't have that figured out in a way that we can appropriately include clouds and climate predictions. We need to just basic climate dynamics issues broadly defined. We've lost a whole generation of climate dynamicists because everyone just looks at the output of climate models.
Judith Curry:They don't think about the processes anymore. How the oceans transport heat and carbon and digest carbon is a big one. A lot of uncertainties in the carbon cycle, both in the land portion of the carbon cycle and the ocean part of the carbon cycle. We can throw magnetic effects out there. I mean, should be looking at that.
Judith Curry:So there's a whole host of things that we don't sufficiently understand. And we've stopped investigating these issues, not completely, but it's just so much easier to analyze the output of climate models and try to write a quick and easy paper and get a headline.
Linnea Lueken:Absolutely. Well, we've gone past the one hour mark, but Doctor. Currie, if you're willing to answer a few more questions. Okay. Okay.
Linnea Lueken:Awesome. Great. We've got a whole lot of questions. I'm trying to pick ones that are ones that we haven't frequently covered before or ones that are very specific to your work. Oh, here's one that's kind of a little bit of a fluff question, but I think it's good.
Linnea Lueken:This is from Tech and he says, has anyone approached Doctor. Curry about turning climate uncertainty and risk into a documentary or movie?
Judith Curry:Well, no. I mean, I've done, you know, several hundred podcasts on the book and many interviews and stuff like that. I don't think, it's really a philosophy of science book in many ways, so I don't think it lends itself into a movie. Yeah, I
Jim Lakely:I'm almost afraid to say this, but people in the chat can leave who they would like to have play Doctor. Curry in the film version of her film.
Judith Curry:Yeah, we had this discussion a while ago. I think we came up with Jodie Foster.
Anthony Watts:Jodie Foster.
Linnea Lueken:Perfect. Alright.
Anthony Watts:It's like in the movie Contact, you know?
Linnea Lueken:Yeah. Okay. Chris Nisbet asks, what is the primary problem with rapid attribution studies that the mainstream media doesn't seem interested in asking about?
Judith Curry:Good question. I mean, I was just writing a chapter for something on this topic this past week. First off, people don't look far enough back in the data, you know, in the historical data. Half the time, they don't even look before 1950. There are plenty of extreme events occurring early in the first half of the twentieth century and in the nineteenth century.
Judith Curry:And then there's longer historical records. Then if you look at the paleoclimate records, some of them, you know, sedimentary analyses that are local, you can find a lot of extreme events much worse than anything we're looking at. So most extreme events fail the detection test to identify anything that's unusual. Okay. But even if you go ahead and you try to do an attribution like the World Weather Attribution Group in The UK and Europe.
Judith Curry:I mean, they crank these things out, you know, within a week of the event, you know, and they run regional climate models with current levels of CO two and pre industrial levels of CO and compare that and then try to make up something related. They say it's a one in a thousand year event. It's three fifty times more likely. All these statistics that make absolutely no sense, they do not have a data distribution that can support those kind of conclusions. The climate models are not fit for purpose for simulating most of these extreme events.
Judith Curry:So it's mostly just fairly meaningless stuff.
Anthony Watts:They're basically nothing more than headline generators. That's all they do.
Judith Curry:Oh, that's their objective.
Anthony Watts:That's their Right after the headlines.
Judith Curry:That's their objective, to try to, you know, amp up the alarm so people will stop burning fossil fuels, and to get the headlines. I mean, that's their stated purpose. You know, the world weather attribution, you can find those kinds of statements right on their webpage.
Linnea Lueken:Here's a good one from Ian who says, anthropogenic water emissions are also significant and water is a far more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. So why do they claim that carbon dioxide is a driver, but water is merely a feedback?
Judith Curry:Well, depends on how you define your system. So if you define a climate model without a carbon cycle, okay, then CO2 is an external forcing agent, whereas CO2 can evaporate and rain out and, you know, fall back down. So that's a feedback. But in the Earth system models now, where they actually have an interactive carbon cycle, CO2 is actually a feedback also in those models. So, it depends on how you define the system.
Linnea Lueken:All right.
Judith Curry:So. These are good questions.
Linnea Lueken:They're really good questions. You guys are on it today. All of our wonderful viewers. How about this one from a viewer I have not seen before? Croikey Is Antarctica land ice net gaining or is this unknown?
Judith Curry:Well, we just had the paper that we talked about where it was increasing for a while then decreasing. Now it's turned the corner to increasing. Increasing. And this is the East Antarctica, the main continent. The West Antarctic ice sheet is the unstable one, the one that's a marine ice sheet.
Judith Curry:Like if you took the ice sheet away, the actual part of the continent would be way below sea level. So this is an unstable. And this is unstable because it's a marine ice sheet, it's unstable from geothermal heat flux and even under ice volcanoes, and is being possibly destabilized to some extent from CO2 driven warming. So the bulk of the ice is in the East Antarctic, and that's very stable, Whereas the West Antarctic is the unstable, unstable one.
Linnea Lueken:Let's see. This one's kind of a general question, but I think it's one that we might wanna talk about for a second from Walter who says, wonder if anyone has calculated how much money has been sent on green energy in the last forty years in taxpayer subsidies and higher energy costs. I think it was energy. Imagine if that had been spent on nuclear.
Judith Curry:Oh, yeah. No. I think people have done these calculations. I can't cite them off the top of my head, but no. We we we took the wrong path.
Judith Curry:We should have been investing investing in nuclear all along. But, you know, Greenpeace and some of these other environmental groups, I I think they actually hate nuclear worse than they hate fossil fuels. They still hate nuclear. But I think the international politics are turning in favor of nuclear now, and hopefully we'll see a rapid expansion. I think Doug Bergen, Department of Interior, is trying to figure out how to make the permitting and all this kind of stuff far more efficient and quick so that we can build nuclear power plants in six years, not sixteen years.
Linnea Lueken:Yep. Here's a good one from our longtime viewer, Bob Johnson, who asks, are the oceans boiling?
Judith Curry:Well, not if you dipped your toe in it lightly. Actually, oceans since last year have cooled off quite a bit. It's pretty striking since from what
Anthony Watts:they Rhetoric has heated up.
Linnea Lueken:Alright. Let's see. Here's an interesting question from Tech who says, can doctor Curry compare the quality of code from her time in academia versus her time in private industry?
Judith Curry:Okay. Code, well, I mean, my time in academia, okay, software packages are much better now. Like, we used to have to code a lot of things by hand. Now, we use MATLAB, you know, there's all these packages, including AI packages, that you have very robust code that you can apply and integrate into your into your specific code. So I think coding is better.
Judith Curry:AI is coding. I mean, we've played around a little bit with that to, you know, pose a problem to AI and have it code. And AI is pretty powerful at coding. So I think overall, coding is better than when it was way back when. I mean, you know, debugging a program and, you know, I mean, I started, you know, in the bad old days, you know, decks of computer cards, and two boxes.
Judith Curry:My program was two boxes of cards. And you would feed it into a card reader, and you'd wait overnight for the results, and then you'd have one little problem, and oh shoot, have to fix that card and then start the process all over again. And so it was a massively slow process in the old days. And the computers, you know, the mainframe computers that I was using back then, order more your cell phones in order of magnitude more powerful. So, you know, computing is in a much better place now than it was back in the old days.
Anthony Watts:Yeah. I was in that era, learned on the era of punch cards and paper tape and teletype machines and deck writers and all that stuff. Yeah. We've come a long way from that. Alrighty.
Linnea Lueken:Just a couple more here, then we'll have to get going. Let's go. Boxwood Green, who I'm not sure I've seen in the chat before says, did the CO two level not drop to 70 or 80 at the end of the last ice age? Just barely over the total death zone for plants. I think the death zone is quite a bit higher is a little bit higher than that.
Anthony Watts:It was Oh, yeah. It did not drop to 70 or 80. That's wrong.
Judith Curry:No. It was about maybe a 80 at its lowest in the interglacials. And the dust zone for plants is still below that. But it's getting close at one eighty is not a good place to be.
Linnea Lueken:Yep. Absolutely. Oh, you know what? I like let's go. This is a good question, both for Anthony and Doctor.
Linnea Lueken:Curry, which is, do we have thirty good years of data to base future predictions on?
Anthony Watts:Well, I want to say no in terms of the temperature record. The surface temperature record is, as you know, badly corrupted, badly managed. And it's inflated. Know, when I did my surface station study and I found, you know, that over 90% of the stations had been encroached upon, and the remaining few percent when we went and examined the data from them versus the stations that had been encroached upon versus the entire dataset, we see a rate of warming in the past thirty years of about half. So, in terms of the surface temperature data, I don't think we do have good data, but we might have some other good data for some other datasets that doctor Curry could talk about, I'm sure.
Judith Curry:No, the surface temperature data is much better than most data. But in terms of making predictions, we use these on model. We use global climate models that don't directly use the data. I mean, they're spun up for a few decades, and then they equilibrate to the current climate, and then they're forced with whatever climate change. So they don't directly rely on climate data.
Judith Curry:But, you know, the state of the data is very frustrating. Satellite data sets give you good coverage. So they're important. But at the end of the day, satellites are measuring voltages in order to get, you know, real geophysical things like temperature, humidity, or ice mass balance, there's a whole lot of manipulations that are needed. And then if you look at the paleoclimate data, that's even worse.
Judith Curry:So that's, know, so the data just isn't good enough, but we do what we can and try to piece things together.
Linnea Lueken:Thank you very much. All right. Well, I think unfortunately, we probably have to get going. I think Anthony has to go. We have a lot of questions still, but unfortunately, you guys, we are just not going to be able to get to them.
Linnea Lueken:I'm going to hand it off to Jim Lakeley. Thank you, guys.
Jim Lakely:And thank you, guys. This has been a fantastic show. I want to thank our guest, Doctor. Judith Curry. You can check her out at Climate, etc.
Jim Lakely:But actually, it's easy just to put her name in there, JudithCurry.com. And be sure to check out her latest book. I want to implore people to visit some of these great websites from the Heartland Institute, climaterealism dot com, climateataglance dot com. What's up with that? And of course, always go to heartland.org, or you can subscribe to our Climate Change Weekly newsletter.
Jim Lakely:And I want to thank all of you in the audience. The live chat today was very, very lively, fantastic questions. And I hope to have Doctor. Curry back on this program again in the future. Thank you all for watching, and we will talk to you next week.
Jim Lakely:Bye bye.
Linnea Lueken:How dare you?